Free Flights When Booking Through United Mileageplus - Last Chance to Book

United's Excursionist perk has been around for many years but I've found surprisingly very few people know about it. This perk allows you to add a free one-way award on a multi-city ticket booked with miles, similar to the free stopover perk that many airlines offer.

When booking a roundtrip flight in and out of the same region using points, this perk allows you to book a free flight within that same region - perfect for a vacation where you are planning to visit 2 destinations. Unfortunately, United has announced that tickets booked as of August 21, 2025 this perk will no longer be available, but it does still apply to travel dates after August 21 as long as you've booked before that date.

Contents

1. How to Use the Excursionist Perk

2. My Personal Experiences

3. Other Considerations

4. In Summary

How to Use the Excursionist Perk

Utilizing the Excursionist perk is very simple - once you are logged into your United Mileageplus account, you will need to go to the Advanced Search page.

Once you are on the Advanced Search page, you will need to make sure "Miles" is selected as well as "Multi-city". Then, you input your destinations and dates.

In this example I've selected the following itinerary:

ORD-LHR on September 16, 2025

LHR-MUC on September 23, 2025

MUC-ORD on Septemeber 30, 2025

Utilizing the excursionist perk, the European "domestic" leg LHR-MUC should show as costing 0 points.

Important Rules:

1. The outbound and inbound flights must be to the same region (e.g., Europe). This would not work to add a leg to another region, say Africa if we were trying to go to Marrakech.

2. At the bottom of the search page ensure you have "All Airlines" selected as this "domestic" leg will be on a partner airline.

3. All legs must be in the same class of service.

As you click through the booking screen, after you select the first ORD-LHR leg, the "domestic" LHR-MUC leg will show as a cost of 0 points. Note that you still need to pay the taxes.

Click through the rest of the booking process and you are all set!

My Personal Experiences

United's Excursionist perk is perfect if you are taking a vacation and plan to visit multiple destinations. Plus, you don't need to have a direct flight to take advantage of the perk. If you need to make a connection somewhere, the perk still applies.

Here's the itinerary for a trip I took to Madrid and Athens utilizing the excursionist perk:

ORD-EWR-MAD: United for 30,000 miles

MAD-FRA-ATH: Lufthansa for free

ATH-FRA-ORD: Lufthansa/United for 30,000 miles

Lufthansa is one of the Star Alliance partners in Europe based in Frankfurt and Munich, so all the legs within Europe were on Lufthansa through Frankfurt, but the perk could be used with any other Star Alliance partner such as Brussels Airlines, Swiss, or Austrian,

In Summary

The United Excursionist perk giving you a free intra-region flight has been one of my favorite ways to get additional value from the United Mileageplus program that many people don't know about. Sadly, United announced this perk will be ending August 21, but if you are planning any trips this summer or early next summer there's still time to utilize this perk as it still applies for flights after August 21 as long as they are booked by then.